The Pope’s Incoherent Geopolitics

Fatima Perspectives #1266

In an address to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis appealed to world government to produce peace and harmony among nations while decrying the rise of “nationalism,” meaning various forms of resistance to the tyrannical encroachments of supra-national bodies on national sovereignty. The “international community,” he said, is “experiencing a period of difficulty, with the resurgence of nationalistic tendencies at odds with the vocation of the international Organizations to be a setting for dialogue and encounter for all countries.”

“Some of these attitudes,” he continued, “go back to the period between the two World Wars, when populist and nationalist demands proved more forceful than the activity of the League of Nations. The reappearance of these impulses today is progressively weakening the multilateral system” — failing to distinguish the post-Christian nationalism that led to World War I from the neo-Christian nationalism he decries today.

By “nationalistic tendencies,” Francis means essentially what the international radical left means: opposition in various nations, especially Italy, Hungary, Poland and Brazil, to open borders, mass migration, multiculturalism and the eradication of Christian identity in the national ethos. Francis admits that these “nationalistic tendencies” have resulted in part from “the growing influence within the international Organizations of powers and interest groups that impose their own visions and ideas, sparking new forms of ideological colonization, often in disregard for the identity, dignity and sensitivities of peoples.” He also declares that with a “spherical” notion of globalization, which “levels differences and smooths out particularities, it is easy for forms of nationalism to reemerge. Yet globalization can prove promising to the extent that it can be ‘polyhedric’, favouring a positive interplay between the identity of individual peoples and countries and globalization …”

Come again? On the one hand, Francis decries “nationalistic tendencies” which are really just a people’s attempt to preserve cultural and religious identity against the onslaught of globalist-engineered migratory invasions and the dictates of “ideological colonization” emanating from the EU and the UN, while on the other hand he calls for “a positive interplay between the identity of individual peoples and countries and globalization…”. But the emergence of “nationalistic tendencies” is precisely an effort by peoples oppressed by globalist powers to preserve “the identity of individual peoples and countries,” which the “international community” is seeking to eradicate.

Thus, as Hungary’s Viktor Orban has declared: “We have built the fence, defended the southern border … Migration is like rust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary. We believe Poles and Hungarians have a common path, common fight and common goal: to build and defend our homeland in the form that we want … Christian and with national values.”

Likewise, Brazil’s newly elected “nationalist” President, Jair Bolsonaro, who barely (indeed miraculously) survived an assassination attempt, thanked God for sparing his life and declared as follows on the day of his inauguration:

“Brazil will return to being a country free of the chains of ideology. My electoral campaign listened to the call of the streets and forged a commitment to place Brazil first and God above all….

“I place myself before the whole nation, on this day, as the day in which the people began to liberate itself from socialism, from the inversion of values, from big government, and from political correctness….

In sum, the “nationalist tendencies” Francis deplores are nothing but the rightful aspirations of peoples oppressed by the “international community” he doggedly defends as somehow necessary to peace among men. But as Pope Pius XI admonished the faithful and the whole world in 1922, during the very interwar period Francis mentioned in his address, no human organization can ever succeed in a work that belongs by divine ordination to the Catholic Church:

“No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.

“There exists an institution able to safeguard the sanctity of the law of nations. This institution is a part of every nation; at the same time it is above all nations. She enjoys, too, the highest authority, the fullness of the teaching power of the Apostles. Such an institution is the Church of Christ. She alone is adapted to do this great work, for she is not only divinely commissioned to lead mankind, but moreover, because of her very make-up and the constitution which she possesses, by reason of her age-old traditions and her great prestige, which has not been lessened but has been greatly increased since the close of the War [World War I], cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.”

But, of course, the farthest thing from the minds of Francis and his Vatican collaborators is the truth that the Church alone “is adapted to do this great work” of promoting peace among men, because she alone is “divinely commissioned to lead mankind” and thus “cannot but succeed in such a venture where others assuredly will fail.”

The current crisis in the Church is such that only a few courageous political leaders are left to attempt to do what the Church should be doing in political society, only to incur the denunciations of Catholic churchmen, including the Pope himself, on account of their “nationalistic tendencies.” The Church has been turned upside down in a diabolical inversion of the proper order of things, lending support to worldly powers while opposing those who resist them.

This is why Our Lady appeared in Fatima, to call for the Consecration of Russia and the consequent worldwide triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, only five years before Pius XI insisted upon the truth the human element of the Church has since rejected — with catastrophic results.

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About the Author

Christopher A. Ferrara earned his Baccalaureate and Juris Doctor degrees from Fordham University. He is President and Chief Counsel of the American Catholic Lawyers Association. His articles have appeared in The Latin Mass and The Remnant, and other publications. He authored several books, including Liberty, The God that Failed, The Secret Still Hidden, False Friends of Fatima and translated into English Antonio Socci's book, Il Quarto Segreto di Fatima. (The Fourth Secret of Fatima). He together with John Salza debated Giuseppe De Carli at our conference in Rome at The Fatima Challenge, May 2010. The results of that historic debate are detailed in Mr. Ferrara's account Vindication. It changed the landscape of the Fatima controversies forever.